How to do Newborn Photography at Home
Want to get professional looking newborn photography at home? Here’s a great tutorial showing how to create pro baby photography at home with no studio lighting or fancy equipment! We will be doing the photoshoot in a small kitchen using bits of cloth and equipment you can find around the house. The only piece of photographic equipment you may need is a decent lens.
If you want to take great pictures of your newborn or you’re a professional photographer looking to add newborn photography to your portfolio, then this tutorial is for you!
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Doing a Newborn photoshoot at home needn’t be expensive!
The first thing to remember in photography, or anything in fact, is that knowledge is power! If you know about photography, you can create good shots all the time, whether that be landscapes, portraits or in this case taking a picture of a newborn at home. So here’s some of the basic principles
Soft lighting suits newborn photography
Taking pictures of newborns with harsh lighting, i.e. flash on camera simply don’t work. Therefore you need to use soft light. This can be done using studio lighting and soft boxes or as in this case we used some net curtains in from of a window. In its simplest terms, when light travels though something, like net curtains or chiffon fabric, it diffuses and the visual effect of this is very soft light that seems to flow over the subject.
So as long as you have a lot of light coming through a window, you can soften it with something like net curtains. To learn more about the effects of light in photography and how to control it, click here.
Creating soft light for newborn photography
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Fill the shadows!
When doing photoshoots at home you’re generally using light coming in from windows, this is great for back lighting but not so great for unwanted shadows or silhouettes. To tackle this simply use a reflector to bounce light back into the baby. In the video you will see I use a £20 silver reflector and a piece of polystyrene to bounce light back into the shot.
Using a white reflector to fill shadows
Using a silver reflector to fill shadows
Shallow DOF + Newborn Photography = Match made in heaven
That soft blurry background and/or foreground is a look called shallow depth of field. One element in creating this is using a wide aperture. So here we come to the one piece of specific newborn photographic equipment that you may need for the shoot - a lens with a wide aperture. There are some cheaper versions out there so don’t worry and we cover this in our video here.
To learn more about apertures and how to control DOF, click here.
Using a 50mm prime lens will help create a shallow DOF
Test the Newborn photoshoot on a teddy!
The last thing you want is to spend ages setting the scene, your camera, the lighting then you take the shots and it’s not working out. There will be some adjustments to make so test the photoshoot using a teddy or doll first and make adjustments as necessary. This could be moving reflectors, cropping in etc.
Doing photography at home is less predictive than in a studio and the last thing you want is a screaming newborn in your set as your getting the lighting right! Doing a test shoot is essential!
Newborn test shot 1- Too dark
Newborn test shot 2 - Shadows filled with reflected light
Avoid Camera Shake
As mentioned previously, doing photography at home normally relies on natural light rather than flash lighting. Therefore you are likely to get what’s called camera shake if there is not enough natural light available. To avoid this, make sure you do the newborn photoshoot when there is plenty of natural light available, i.e. middle of the day, and keep your shutter speed above 1/125th of a second. Remember babies move and the last thing you want is a blurry newborn!
To learn more about shutter speeds and how to freeze moment in photography, click here.
Handheld camera on newborn shoot - Do not go below 1/125th second
Safety First
Unless you’re completely stupid, you will always keep the safety of that newborn paramount! In our video we have set up on a kitchen table and there are people watching the baby at all times ensuring there is no possible way she can fall or be injured. This newborn photoshoot was also in the middle of a hot summers day ensuring the baby was not going to get cold.
It’s basic common sense - always make sure your newborn is safe and warm at all times.
Newborn photography equipment for shooting at home
Here is a list of the equipment we used to take these pictures:
A kitchen table
Some fake fur (like a rug)
Some net curtains (can also use chiffon fabric)
Patio doors as our light source
A silver reflector (can use tin foil on a piece of card)
A piece of polystyrene
A good lens (50mm f1.4, approx. £300) or (50mm f1.8, approx. £70-£100) available for Nikon or Canon
And good knowledge of the control of photography!
Also wait until the end of the video for a special appearance by the dog!! 😊
Examples of my Newborn photography taken at home
Newborn photograph taken at home 1 - Settings - f/1.8 - 1/250 - ISO 100 - Focal Length 50mm
Newborn photograph taken at home 2 - Settings - f/1.8 - 1/250 - ISO 100 - Focal Length 50mm
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